1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to vision recognition systems, and in particular, to methods and systems for vision recognition of information on printed media.
2. Description of the Related Art
For both historical reasons and human factor reasons, people are accustomed to, and enjoy interacting with printed media. For example, people enjoy reading printed books, magazines, and the like. Recently, efforts have been made to provide some degree of interactivity with printed media.
For example, there are educational toys for children that utilize books especially configured and shaped for use with specialized electronic hardware. Some systems include an electronic base that accepts solid state cartridges that correspond to specific books. The user inserts the cartridge into the base and places a corresponding configured book on the base. The user may then use an electronic pen to point to different pictures or words in the book. The electronic base will determine where the user is pointing via a grid or the like in the base, use this location information to access information from the cartridge, and respond accordingly. Other similar systems use capacitive or pressure sensors to determine the location the user is pointing at using a finger or other pointer. For example, a user can point to a word in the book using an electronic pen, the base then identifies the area to which the pen is pointing, and the base utilizes information from the cartridge, based on the identified area, to speak the word. Disadvantageously, the forgoing conventional systems generally need books specifically designed for use with the systems, and often cannot be programmed or customized by the user.